Mississauga Goddam

Rough Trade; 2004

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Shock value, like youth, is fleeting. Remember Jackass: The Movie? You and a couple of buddies snuck in with a six-pack of Miller High Life after passing around a bong named Captain Jack, and for 87 blessed minutes, you almost believed bungee-cord wedgies and unabashed homoeroticism were the pinnacle of comedic history. But the next morning, in the cold glare of a Chicago November, you weren't exactly pining for a sequel.

Actually, maybe that wasn't you. Anyway, the comparison is unfair, because The Hidden Cameras, led by sugarcoated pervert Joel Gibb, are infinitely more amusing than anything Steve-O could jam up his rectum. The Smell of Our Own, the band's Rough Trade debut, was a subversively catchy accomplishment, full of lavish pop and explicit homosexuality. Their latest, Mississauga Goddamn, is a fading echo of the original, and while that's way better than a new Johnny Knoxville vehicle, it still feels like the season South Park stopped surprising and all your friends switched back to Simpsons reruns on Wednesday nights.

Named for a dam in Gibb's suburban Ontario hometown, the new record confirms the young maestro's knack for bright AM pop melodies. Saccharine love songs like "We Oh We" or "Builds the Bone" could almost be mistaken for that Bread single you once got on a mixtape from a high school crush. Fortunately, Gibb still can barely let a song go by without a graphic description of gay lovin', giving even the schmaltziest moments a gleeful dissonance. Like this line from "That's When the Ceremony Starts": "I drank from the wine that came from inside/ The heart of his meat and the splurge of his sweet."

Lingering beneath the album's sunny exterior is Gibb's unease over his Mississauga upbringing. When doubling as sexual innuendoes, these images subtly rebuke pious bread-breakers who would condemn his lifestyle. Equally clever is Gibb's tack of cloaking explicit lyrics in perky arrangements to which those same churches might take very kindly. The depth of his resentment finally leaches out through the lyrics of the title track, a languid shuffle drenched in Pet Sounds strings and harmonies. "I'm wearing my disguise/ Until I rid my life of Mississauga Goddam," Gibb admits.

At their best, Gibb and his ever-expanding cast of accompanists stitch together a disguise as beautiful as a Technicolor dreamcoat. But despite the strength of "Music Is My Boyfriend" and lush single "The Fear Is On", I continually find myself humming songs from the debut instead. "Ban Marriage" was truly brilliant: a hook-filled pop ditty about the silliness of marriage, at a time when the issue of marriage was particularly close to the hearts of many. And "Golden Streams"-- well, it remains the loveliest tune ever recorded about peeing on one's partner. In their stead, Gibb drops repetitive stinkers like "B Boy" or "I Want Another Enema". I'll get back to you on the Jackass sequel, but according to IMDB, it went straight to video.